Cittadella Gozo

Multimedia show – accessible

The Cittadella Visitors’ Centre at the former citadel of Gozo in Malta offers a truly unique visitor experience. Designed by Sarner International, it brings together the past and the present to create a completely immersive story about the site’s history. Sarner’s concept also provides the tour’s multimedia displays as accessible versions. Something made possible by the technology from tonwelt.

Picturesquely situated in the Mediterranean Sea next to Malta, the island of Gozo is home to a particularly imposing architectural monument: the city’s disused water reservoir. Sarner International’s renowned group of scenographers decided to turn this citadel into a world of experience, emphasising links that exist between the building, the beautiful nature and the people. They also decided to convey the history of the location not only in facts but in feelings. The result is a multimedia experience with international appeal that welcomed over 100,000 visitors in its first three months and received numerous international awards. Sarner employed a “combination of traditional exhibition technology and immersive storytelling” in its concept, which culminates in an impressive 360° show finale. In other words, their production pulls out all the stops to overwhelm visitors with a mix of sound, images and light. But what about those visitors whose ability to hear or see is limited? How can they experience such a show? Against a backdrop of increasingly immersive multimedia staging, that’s a question more and more exhibition organisers are asking. Or to put it bluntly: Are immersive visitor experiences and accessibility mutually exclusive?

Accessible multimedia staging requires a perfect partnership of content and technology

Sarner asked tonwelt a fundamental question: How can multimedia guides transfer the sensory staging of immersive exhibitions to those with impairments, without diminishing their overall experience? The answer tonwelt came up with was to develop a concept with Sarner which makes specially adapted content accessible through the supraGuide MULTI and supraGuide TOUCH multimedia devices. For example, visitors with impaired hearing or hearing aids are offered an audio track on their device which actively reduces the sound of the room, making speech easier to understand. For those without hearing, the supraGuide TOUCH allows multimedia content to be displayed as a subtitled version on the device’s screen. In the same vein, guests with impaired vision are provided with an audio-descriptive version of each station via the supraGuide MULTI. Thanks to its Braille keyboard, they can fully operate this device by touch. Finally, all accessible tours are available in eight languages, ensuring that the visitor experience also remains unaffected by language barriers.